Life as a Dark Room
by Omnicat
Summary: There won't be an article, but Maria's exhibition tells a story of its own.


**Title:** Life as a Dark Room

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** All of _Canaan_.

 **Characters & Pairings:** Canaan x Maria

 **Summary:** There won't be an article, but Maria's exhibition tells a story of its own.

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 **Life as a Dark Room**

When Mino saw the developed photographs for the first time, he thought it was a mistake.

"Black and white?" he asked. "What's next, woodcarvings?"

But it wasn't a mistake. She'd made a lot of mistakes in her life, the majority of them very recently, it seemed, but _this_ was not a mistake. This was...

Mino had cast one narrow-eyed look at her before examining the photos more closely. They weren't half bad, not at all. The monochrome mess of crowdedness and incessant action happened to fit his impression of Shanghai as a sense-stumping wall of sights and sounds to a T. Most weren't remotely fit to be news photos, even for their mangy gossip rag, but then, he didn't have a story to put them in.

It wasn't a mistake, definitely, but Maria found it hard to explain what it _was_ , then. Like the city she had left behind but for her pictures and her memories, there was still a thousand things at once going on just below the surface of her. Every other picture she'd taken made her heart twist and turn painfully in her chest. The dragon float spewing lemonade, the Unbloom man in an agonized spasm amidst playing children, a swarm of balloons swept up between two skyscrapers, Canaan looking back over her shoulder, hair flying and arm twisted toward the camera (perfection turned paper - Maria could feel her hand on her wrist all over again), a jam-packed restaurant as the backdrop for a table laden with empty dishes, Yunyun's Borner mark, the back of Mr High Tension's head and front seats partly illuminated by the blazing-bright lights of his Nene-blaring CD player, Canaan examining a store-shelf of confectionaries, two boxes of sugarsticks already in hand, Canaan halfway through an Eiffel Tower of string, Canaan's non-existent modelling skills, Canaan Canaan Canaan...

With a serious look and gentle hands, Mino pushed the stack of photographs back into her arms, along with the name and address of a gallery downtown.

"Ditch the mag as soon as you're able," he said, "and make a living out of that mission of yours. You're gonna be great one day."

Maria had smiled, silent, and squeezed back the hand squeezing her shoulder. She took all the time she needed to sort herself out by sorting through the photographs, until the patterns became apparent and that little writhing snake of pain stilled. The resulting distant ache was simple and familiar - _I miss you, Canaan_ \- and the exhibition a success.

Pictures of the factory and the village and the Snakes went into a box of her own; she and Mino had agreed that that story had run its course, and they would leave the decision to share it with the world up to Yunyun and Canaan. What went onto the walls was the all-encompassing, never-ending tale of normal girls living in Shanghai. The glow of everyday life was diffuse, almost dim and unremarkable, only gaining in strength when you gazed at it long and hard. Rather than choosing the photographs, she had followed the pull of the lights with the strongest gravity, the snapshots that would drag people's eyes away from the stark white walls and into that dim little world, deeper and deeper, until they could feel the smiles and the sorrows as their own.

She was starting small.

Mino was the first to see the end result; she could tell the compliments were trembling to escape. He stopped and stared at the two portraits sharing their enigmatic name plaque, as Maria had hoped he would. _Canaan: land of hope._ That was what her exhibition was called, yet the two Canaans' expressions, so different from anything else in the room, shattered the spell of normalcy in a sudden flash. It was a sentimental gamble with her entire artistic vision at stake, but Maria couldn't help herself. She just hoped the people would be able to reconsile their feelings the way she had.

"This is giving me great ideas on how to write my article," Mino spilled - and immediately followed it up with a groan and the smack of palm meeting forehead. "But of course the magazine would never print it."

Maria grin was sheepish, but she found her mood insuppressable.

In the end, Canaan had truly proven to be too bright to look at directly. Dulling down the photographs to black and white was Maria's defeat, her compromise, yet also her challenge and her promise. Who would even believe them if they revealed the full, unbelievable truth all at once?

Canaan's path was long since paved, her silhouette unmistakable and inescapable, but Maria was no longer an empty white wall herself. Her own journey was well under way, her destination set. Things would never again be like they once were, but the bond between them could not be further from broken. While Canaan's light was still that will-o'-the-wisp twinkling and glimmering in the distance, she knew the truth that awaited her on the other side of the minefield swamp. Maria knew better than to follow it as she was, just as Canaan knew better than to hunt down Maria's light; neither of them would be that selfish. But Maria was determined.

One day, her pictures, old and new, would have all the colours they ought to have. One day she would be able to watch without being hurt, and the next time their paths crossed, she and Canaan would hold hands again, and never let go.


End file.
